Pub Rants

Category: Publishing Deals & Contracts

Where Did All of Kristin’s Good Content on Contracts Go? To our eNewsletter!

by Kristin Nelson

In October, NLA implemented a new feature–a special News Alert eMail blast for subscribers of our newsletter. Today, a blast went out informing readers of how Harpercollins subscription service with Scribd will work and how authors will get paid.

Because my time is so limited these days (sadly!), regular or daily blog posts that alert readers about changes to publishing contracts and how that impacts authors just isn’t possible for me. But I am still doing great posts 2 or 3 times a months. Those columns can be found in NLA’s Monthly newsletter for our subscribers.

If you’ve been suffering from Pub Rants withdrawal, that would be the place to go to get your fix. Our eNewsletter is free. Just click on the Newsletter button at the bottom of our web page to sign up.

And for those of you who weren’t subscribers yet and missed that blast,  here’s the link to where you can see the news.

By the way, this is exactly the type of content I plan to tackle in tonight’s webinar:

Wednesday, November 13, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

THE NITTY GRITTY – HOW DIGITAL IS TRANSFORMING THE PUBLISHING LANDSCAPE.

There’s still time to register.

Black Forest Fire Auction concludes

by Kristin Nelson

The auction has concluded. Wowza. I’m completely humbled. And trust me, I’m going to spend hours on this critique! The winner deserves that and more.

I don’t think Dave and company are going to believe me when I tell them how much money we raised on their behalf.

THANK YOU! I’ve said it before but y’all are awesome. If you still want to make a donation, feel free to. I haven’t closed that portal yet.

http://www.gofundme.com/3sgzis

Black Forest Fire Auction Ends Today, Wed. Aug. 7 at 5 PM

by Kristin Nelson

First off, let me just say how AWESOME every single one of my blog readers is. You guys have just blown me away.

Right now my 50 page Manuscript critique with 30 minute follow up Skype session is at $2500. That’s crazy! And just FYI that the auction closes today (August 7) at 5 pm Mountain Time. As soon as it ends and there is a winner, I’ll be sending out an email to set up the date and time.

And for folks not bidding but just wanting to make a donation, we’ve raised $3240.00!

That’s $5740.00 total!!!

Dave, Jen, Jason, Rebecca & Timothy are just going to be stunned.

Big Hugs. People in publishing are the best.

You Have 10 Minutes. What Do You Take?

by Kristin Nelson

A police officer pounds on your door and when you open it, yells you’ve got 10 minutes to get out before the fire hits. What do you take?

Well, if you are Kristin’s good friend Dave Olsen, you take nothing. Sadly Dave was out of town when the alert came to evacuate because of the Colorado Springs Black Forest fire was raging out of control and just about to hit his street. Luckily, one tenant, Jen Stemen was home. Rebecca and Timothy (who had literally just moved into their bottom half apartment two weeks prior) were not there. Nor was Jason Sullivan who lived in the apartment above the workshop barn.

Jen has ten minutes. She grabs everyone’s laptop and throws it in her car. Then she runs to grab her dog Cosmo, Dave’s dog Shadow, Jason’s dog Switters (all big dogs). Then she dashes to load them into her tiny car only to realize that there isn’t going to be enough room.

She has to make a split decision: dogs or car?  She  doesn’t hesitate (even though she had no renter’s insurance). She abandons her car. Throws the laptops, the dogs, and her just-in-case suitcase into Dave’s old truck and hightails it out of there. The house, the entire property, is completely destroyed.

TV coverage captured the 100 foot flames that was their street. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll see my posting on the day I learned that Dave had lost everything but was cheerfully moving on and even quipping about how he could now move to Boulder, Colorado to be closer to his daughter. Nothing to pack!

Every year I donate a 30-page manuscript critique with a follow up Skype session for the Brenda Novak Charity auction because my nephew has juvenile diabetes and this is a cause close to my heart. Well, this is very personal for me as well. My friend Dave is lucky. He is insured. It will cover a lot but probably not everything.

But this auction is for Jen and Jason–who had no renter’s insurance. And especially for Jen, who sacrificed to save the pets. (And please let me take a minute to say that if you are renting your place and don’t have insurance, please buy some. Today. You just never ever know. Usually it’s under $100 for a year. Well worth the cost for the absolute worst case scenario. And I hope you never have to use it!)

So if you’ve ever wanted a critique from me and you want the money to go to great cause, now is your chance. I’m really hoping to raise at least $1500.00. Deets below.

BLACK FOREST WILDFIRE AUCTION –

50-page Manuscript critique followed by a 30 minute Skype Session

Runs: August 2, 2013 thru August 7, 2013

Click on this link and bid.

And if money is tight and you really can’t participate in an auction but might like to donate a buck, you can do that too. Just click on this link. Even if you think $1.00 is not a lot, that’s $1.00 more than what they have right now and if 200 people donate a buck, that adds up.

And THANK YOU. Except for the small percentage that GoFundMe takes to process donations, ALL the money will go to Jen & Jason.

 

Pic 1: Me, Jen, and Dave on the day we were clearing the property

Pic 2:: the house before

Pic 3:  the house after

Kristin-Jen-Dave OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA z - hillside view of house - AFTER

Black Forest Wildfire Pics

by Kristin Nelson

I’m sure you’ve been dying to see a picture of Agent Kristin manning a wood chipper. Finally, your chance. My husband Brian and I spent a weekend with Dave helping him clear his property after the Black Forest Wildfire destroyed his home and everything there.

Pic 1: Dave chainsaws a tree

Pic 2: One tree down

Pic 3: That’s me picking up branches that have been cut so as to take to the wood chipper

Pic 4: I’m watching Dave cut so I can grab those branches

Pic 5: A very dirty Kristin & Brian

Pic 6: Dave & Me & a wood chipper

Pic 7: Me feeding the chipper. Fargo anyone?

Pic 8: The clean up crew. Jen, who saved the dogs, is sandwiched between me and my husband Brian. She, who had just lost everything, still came to help clean the property. Amazing gal!

Pic 9: My favorite picture! Dave had a stack of firewood for his fireplace. It was the ONLY thing that didn’t burn. LOL How ludicrous is that?

DaveChainsawsTree DaveWithFoundation Landscapeshot_me&branches KN&Dave-tree-down Brian&Kristin-dirty Dave-Kristin-Woodchipper KristinFeedsChipper TheCleanUpGang Firewood-didn'tburn

Indie Author & Agent Partners – Thought 2

by Kristin Nelson

So last week when I was out in New York for the Writers Digest Conference, I gave a talk on why successful indie authors might want to partner with agents.

As I was putting together my talking points, I actually came to the conclusion that why they partner is the wrong question. The real question might be when should indie authors partner with an agent.

If  indie authors are becoming successful, an agent can accelerate their exposure in a big way. For example, I couple of weeks ago I took on self-publishing phenom Jasinda Wilder. On March 16, she released her 18th novel FALLING INTO YOU.

In less than one month, she sold 140,000 digital copies of this title.

Yes, you read that right.

That’s a crazy number of copies in a short period of time. She hit the NYT and USA Today list for several weeks in a row.

She decided to partner with me. My job is now to accelerate her exposure in any way possible. Within a week Publishers Weekly did a feature story on her and I imagine this won’t be the last coverage given her extraordinary success.

Would Jasinda get coverage without me? Sure. But there is no doubt I’m stomping on the gas. This can be incredibly beneficial in talking with publishers and for foreign deals.

Indie & Agent Partners: Thought 1

by Kristin Nelson

On Thursday I’m flying to New York City to give a presentation at the Writers Digest Conference on Friday morning. My topic is why a successful indie self-publishing author might want to partner with an agent.

If you are an indie author that doesn’t see the value in having an agent, I’m not really going to change your mind so there really is no purpose in reading my next several blog posts where I share my thoughts. However, if you are curious, I’m happy to share several reasons on why they do. Now of course I can only speak to why several indie authors have decided to partner with me. It’s going to vary depending on the author and the agent.  But I represent several and they find our relationship invaluable.

Thought 1: People are complaining about the archaic nature of publishing and why doesn’t it change.

Okey dokey. Let’s quit complaining and start having conversations to instigate change because how do you think change happens?

In May of 2012, I had Hugh Howey fly out to New York to sit-down with publishers. I thought it was important for them to meet him in-person just so they could see for themselves what a reasonable, personable, and forward-thinking author he was. He was not, and has never been, anti-traditional publisher. In fact, he’s fairly pro-publisher. But a partnership has to make sense and there is a lot of stuff from traditional publishing that doesn’t make sense.

Before Hugh got on the plane, we both knew that it was very unlikely that the meetings would result in an offer that we’d be willing to take.  Yet, WE DID IT ANYWAY. Why? And this might be kind of silly but both of us felt kind of strongly that having in-person conversations with publishers about our sticking points (ebook royalty rate, sales thresholds in out of print clauses, and non-compete clauses) was necessary in order to facilitate possible change in the future. In other words, we weren’t going to see the benefit of it but maybe a future indie publishing author would because we had started the conversation.

And these conversations could only occur via a reasonable author partnering with a reasonable agent who were meeting with affable and reasonable publishers and editors and having frank, smart, and intelligent conversations with them about current contractual sticking points.

For Hugh, it resulted in a very unexpected print-rights only offer five months later (much to our surprise). That was way sooner than either of us had ever thought to hope.

I imagine that in the not-so-distant-future other indie authors (and who might be unagented) might be thanking Hugh for having partnered with an agent (way) back in 2012 so as to have these meetings. Just as they might be thanking Bella Andre and her agent for pulling off one of the first print-rights only deals (that was publicly announced -there might be others I’m unaware of).

 

 

Self Publishing? Excel Is Your Friend

by Kristin Nelson

I’ve discovered that in general, authors are not numbers people. They tend to have vague idea of sales and revenue earned. In fact, most authors probably don’t scrutinize their royalty statements like they should (with a few exceptions of course). And I get it. Authors are creative folks. Math uses the other side of the brain. But if you are digitally self-publishing, then you are your own publisher. And given that, you should be generating your own royalty statements in an excel spreadsheet. Here’s what you should track and why.

TO TRACK:

1) All Price Points – sales especially

2) All editions — including audio/shorter works

3) Copies given away for free

4) All distribution venues where editions are available

5) Percentage splits/royalty

6) Cumulative totals

 

WHY:

If you later want to partner with an agent, that person will need a fully transparent and detailed record of all sales to represent you fully.

At DBW, fellow agent and panelist Steve Axelrod made a good point about how agents are using new metrics to sell an author to editors, to film, to foreign. We are using FB and twitter followers. Visibility on big e-Sites like Wired and Boing Boing. Actual digital sales clearly outlined.

Especially for film and foreign sales. If there isn’t a big publishing deal to start the buzz abroad and in Hollywood (which was the traditional path), well, presenting the facts can make a difference in convincing these two realms to pay attention to the title and license unexploited rights. Keep in mind that electronic book adoption and sales abroad are easily 3 years behind what is going on in the U.S. Foreign publishers must be convinced to license rights to a digital-only title.

But actual sales and documentation of that data speaks volumes – at least that’s what we are finding here at NLA.

So, are you tracking your sales? If not, get started.

 

 

 

 

Because The First Thing That Comes To Mind Is The Size Of The Advance – Not.

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: With New York Publishing shut down, I’m working on a UK contract and catching up on email. I think it’s going to be this way for most of the week.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now?  HOPE I DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU by Tom Waits

Obviously the Random House – Penguin merger is all the news in the publishing world right now. It’s a big deal. But I read this article in Publishers Weekly and pretty much snorted my tea.

PW makes it sound like an agent’s biggest concern might be the reduction in advance amounts paid for books.

I’m concerned about MANY things that might come about because of the merger but smaller advances is not one of them. It’s not even on my top 10 list of things to be concerned about.

Publishing saw the consolidation of publishing houses into smaller and smaller numbers in the early 90s. That evolved into what had been known as the “Big 6” of the last decade.

It’s now down to the “Big 5” and quite honestly, I don’t see NewsCorp (which owns HarperCollins) settling for the status quo. Wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the “Big 5” become “4” with two more houses merging in the not-so-distant-future.

Of course this all has to pass anti-trust rulings, etc.

What does fewer publishing houses mean for authors?

That answer is pretty simple. Fewer choices. Less competition. More uniformity of royalty rates (like that hasn’t happened already because houses are already more interested in status quo among themselves rather than actual competition). Narrowed vision of what is the market and what should sell (and they already have tunnel vision as any number of digitally self-published successes have recently proven). More emphasis on commercial blockbusters and less building authors from the mid list.

Getting the picture? Smaller advances? Not a main issue on my radar.